October 31, 2005

Just Go Right in There and Get 'Em!

Yesterday, Captain Ed had an interesting and troubling post on the rise of a particularly vicious Central-American gang called Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, M-18, or MS. At the end of the post, Captain Ed noted that deportations have had virtually no effect on gang members, who now number more than 50,000; they simply sneak right back into the United States again the moment they are released. He ends with this ringing demand:

We need to demand that Congress finally do something about the southern border and the flood of illegals that come across it if we purport to take security seriously, especially in this age of terror. We made an impact on the Supreme Court and on spending just by speaking out -- and we need to do so on this issue as well. [Emphasis added]

All right. Like what, exactly?

Note, I want specifics: not like Phil Donohue's prescription for how he would have captured Osama bin Laden without invading Afghanistan: "I would just go right in there and get him!" Ed links Michelle Malkin (Chris Kelly writing) -- another brilliant blog whose brilliance seems to fade a bit on this particular issue; Kelly suggests no more of a solution than does Captain Ed.

There are probably about 12,000,000 illegal immigrants in the U.S. How do you round up this many people? How many cops would it take? Do we need to rewrite the posse comitatus act to set the military loose to search American houses and arrest people they suspect of being criminals? How many soldiers do we pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Central America, to play police officer when they have had exactly zero training for that function?

Where do we put all these detainees as we round 'em up? Reopen Manzanar for anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant? Even at a rate of one hearing every five minutes, it would take more than 37 years just to process the first million detainees -- and you still have 11,000,000 to go. Plus however many slip across during that first 37-year period. How many courtrooms, judges, court reporters, and clerks are we going to dedicate to doing nothing but processing these hearings? And since the arresting agent would have to testify in any case where irregularies were alleged by the detainee, how many Border Patrol and soldiers do we pull from the line to hang around the courthouse in case they're needed?

And when the hearings end, what do we do with the proven illegals? Deport them?

Nothing, absolutely nothing, is going to work so long as we're dealing with millions of people. Before anything else is done, we must create incentives for the illegales to regularize themselves. And we only do that by offering something: people who have hidden here for years are not going to turn themselves in for nothing.

President Bush's plan might not be the best we can construct; Congress will have its say. But without first separating the "people [who] want nothing more than economic opportunity" -- the vast majority -- from the criminal scum who join gangs like MS-13 (or worse, al-Qaeda), everything we do will be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. As any engineer knows, any structure, no matter how sturdy, will collapse under its own weight if you make it big enough.

There is no blinking it: we are going to have to offer carrots along with the stick to get undocumented aliens to turn themselves in voluntarily. There is no alternative. Some may wrongly term this "amnesty;" but given the choice between the unpalatable and the impossible, I know which I would select.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 31, 2005, at the time of 4:03 AM

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Comments

In Australia illegals are detained, and deported unless the lawyers can come up with a reason for them to stay, much screaming from the Left and the MSM, which are same are they not? Could not an area be set aside in the USA, say in a desert area, where the gangs could just shoot it out and leave the rest of the population to get on with their lifes.

The above hissed in response by: stackja1945 at October 31, 2005 5:35 PM

Note that the stated problem was that when we catch MS-13 members it does no good to deport them because they sneak back in with little trouble. The answer is relatively simple, get control of the borders. Once we stop the flow of illegal aliens into the country drawing down the number of predatory criminals in the illegal community will not be that difficult. Any law enforcement officer will tell you that almost all criminals get caught for something sooner or later. Also, any law enforcement officer will tell you that the local cops know who the bad guys are. Even if they can't build a case against them good enough to take to court they still know who they are. If we were to begin to deport every illegal who comes to the attention of any law enforcement for any reason it would be easy for the cops to contrive some reason to stop and question the people that they know to be gang members. Then when they discover that the guy that they pulled over for running the stop-sign is illegal thy drop a dime to ICE and someone shows up to take them to the big concentration camp in Arizona until they can be loaded into cattle cars and shipped back to Mexico, or wherever they came from.

And before anyone says that getting control of the borders is easier said than done remember that the Minutemen (a bunch of mostly unarmed retirees in lawn chairs) were able to virtually shut down illegal border crossings in the area where they concentrated themselves.

And before anyone says that getting control of the borders is easier said than done remember that the Minutemen (a bunch of mostly unarmed retirees in lawn chairs) were able to virtually shut down illegal border crossings in the area where they concentrated themselves.

And what happened to the potential illegal immigrants... did they just go home and give up -- or did they cross a couple of miles away?

Now tell me how many Minutemen there were for each operation, how wide their area was... and then perhaps we can figure out how many people we would need to seal off the border that way.

The U.S.-Mexican border is about 3,000 miles long (it doesn't go straight; it meanders). The U.S.-Canadian border is considerably longer, perhaps 4,500 miles. And of course, there is the Gulf Coast and the Pacific Coast. And lest you think it improbable that so many would come here by boat, recall the Mariel boatlift: over a hundred thousand immigrants in six months from just one tiny country, Cuba.

I think you're putting the horse behind the cart here: you seem to be saying that first we seal off the border, then we worry about separating the bad guys from the people who just want to work hard and earn a decent living. That's like sticking your head out the window -- and then opening it.

Why not separate the decent from the indecent first, and then focus on interdicting the indecent?

Dafydd - you last post makes no sense to me, at least as I read it - to use an analogy, you're trying to pull the needles out of the haystack while the combine is still running.

First you have to seal, or as close to seal, the border. Then it's time to start filtering the folks that are already here. Thsi would proceed on 2 tracks. One is the voluntary registration of economic migrants, with security screening and eventual citizenship for those deemed not to be threats. The second is active search for, investigation of and deportation of gang members, radical islamists (whether proven terrorists or not), etc. If you don't seal first, then these deportees will just come back in.

The above hissed in response by: holdfast at November 1, 2005 9:31 AM

The following hissed in response by: danupton

"The U.S.-Mexican border is about 3,000 miles long (it doesn't go straight; it meanders). "

Yes, but the majority of does not lend itself to crossing because it is simply too far away from anything. Remember an illegal has to make the crossing with only what he can carry. If he has to walk too far on the Mexican side and then crosses and finds himself too far from some kind of built up area on the US side then the Border Patrol finds him by following the circling buzzards. This is why the Mexicans waited until the Minutemen finished their demonstration and went home to cross rather than going "a few miles" and crossing at another point.

The above hissed in response by: danupton at November 1, 2005 3:48 PM

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